y had an excellent opportunity to
demonstrate its strength wherever it existed. In February, 1878, a
conference was held at Toledo for the purpose of welding the various
political organizations of workingmen and advocates of inflation into
an effective weapon as a single united party. This conference, which was
attended by several hundred delegates from twenty-eight States, adopted
"National" as the name of the party, but it was usually known from
this time on as the Greenback Labor party. The Toledo platform, as the
resolutions adopted by this conference came to be designated, first
denounced "the limiting of the legal-tender quality of greenbacks, the
changing of currency-bonds into coin-bonds, the demonetization of the
silver dollar, the excepting of bonds from taxation, the contraction
of the circulating medium, the proposed forced resumption of specie
payments, and the prodigal waste of the public lands." The resolutions
which followed demanded the suppression of bank notes and the issue of
all money by the Government, such money to be full legal-tender at its
stamped value and to be provided in sufficient quantity to insure the
full employment of labor and to establish a rate of interest which would
secure to labor its just reward. Other planks called for the coinage
of silver on the same basis as that of gold, reservation of the public
lands for actual settlers, legislative reduction of the hours of labor,
establishment of labor bureaus, abolition of the contract system of
employing prison labor, and suppression of Chinese immigration. It
is clear that in this platform the interests of labor received full
consideration. Just before the conference adjourned it adopted two
additional resolutions. One of these, adopted in response to a telegram
from General B. F. Butler, denounced the silver bill just passed by
Congress because it had been so modified as to limit the amount of
silver to be coined. The other, which was offered by "Brick" Pomeroy,
declared: "We will not affiliate in any degree with any of the old
parties, but in all cases and localities will organize anew...
and... vote only for men who entirely abandon old party lines and
organizations." This attempt to forestall fusion was to be of no avail,
as the sequel will show, but Pomeroy and his followers in the Greenback
clubs adhered throughout to their declaration.

In the elections of 1878, the high-water mark of the movement, about
a million votes were c